REVIEW: War Horse (12A)

I tend to be a blubber, I cry at movies - all sorts of movies. I always cry at the end of West Side Story and, however bizarre it may seem, Scott of the Antarctic. In the past year, have shed a tear or two at both Up! and Toy Story 3. So, having read reviews and notice tweets about War Horse I went prepared, expecting to sob at regular intervals. Sadly, though less embarrassingly, I didn't feel close to tears during the movie, not even a choking feel in my throat. Maybe I'm heartless, maybe I find it hard to empathise with a horse, or maybe the movie isn't quite as good, not emotionally manipulative, as has been made out in the publicity and reviews.



The movie looks amazing. The pre-First World War Devon village is completely believable, as are the conditions the soldiers have to endure in the trenches. Some have suggested that the war scenes are as graphic as Saving Private Ryan - maybe. Certainly it shows the squalor and suffering, something few today can truly imagine. (At least, on the First World War, soldiers generally killed other soldiers, unlike today).

The movie, for all its great cinematography, has its flaws. At the centre of the movie is what should have been a truly touching moment on No Man's Land but, briefly, Spielberg loses his touch and forgets that this is cinema - the script seems awkward and it feels more like second-rate theatre, just projected very tall.

I'm a big fan of John Williams' movie score and this score is always well-judged and does it best to tug at the heart-strings, but, unfortunately, seems to be more of an undergraduate exercise in composing in the style of Vaughan Williams. John Williams' best scores are when he embraces other styles and makes them his own, in War Horse he has become RVW and his originality has been almost entirely consumed, but for the big, emotional theme that sounds like an early sketch for his own "For the Fallen" from Saving Private Ryan.

War Horse is the ultimate Lassie movie, with a horse instead of a dog. It's story is bitty, sometimes too bitty, and that is why, I think, I didn't develop any emotional link to the characters. Perhaps at two and a half hours it actually needed more time and a television mini series would have suited the epicness better.

Some say that Steven Spielberg is the king of schmaltz, and it's true that the storytelling in his best movies always has a strong schmaltzy element but War Horse adds an extra layer of saccharine with the screenplay being co-written by Richard Curtis.

In the end, I found that I simply didn't care enough about the horse, or its various owners. I was suitably shocked by the horror of the trenches but wasn't surprised with how the movie ended. It's a good movie. and nearly two and a half hours flies by, but it's not, in my opinion, a great movie as many have suggested, and I have seen many better movies in my time.

REVIEW: The Adventures of Tin Tin - Secret of the Unicorn (PG)

 This morning I went to watch The Adventures of Tin Tin - Secret of the Unicorn expecting big things - directed by Steven Spielberg, co-written by Steven Moffat, produced by Peter Jackson, score by John Williams and a trailer that showed some of the finest animation ever produced - I wasn't to be disappointed.



 Tin Tin (let's call it that for simplicity) is a tremendous romp - buckles are swashed with abandon, there's tension and action, fantastic chase scenes and a fair bit of humour and levity.

The movie opens in the visual style of the original Tin Tin books (and the old television series) with a pre-story a bit like the pre-title sequence in a Bond movie before shifting into the modern animation.

The movie combines three Herge stories: Red Rackham's Treasure, The Crab with the Golden Claws and The Secret of the Unicorn. Tin Tin (Jamie Bell) meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) and follow clues to find the treasure of the Captain's ancestor, Sir Francis Haddoque. There's Snowy the dog and the Thompson Twins (played by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) and some great baddies.

The animation is truly magnificent - it's a mixture of Motion Capture and more traditional/CGI techniques. For the vast majority of the movie you forget that it's animated, so good is the animation and characterisation. This does, of course, raise the question.... 

Why not use real actors?

There's truly amazing reflections in multiple mirrors and distortion through a magnifying glass; there's floods and waves and waterfalls and breaking glass.... it's all there. They've moved the bar for animation not an inch or two but several yards.

The use of 3D is good - I mean, the vast majority of the time you don't notice it, it seems totally integrated into the movie and, apart from one moment (you'll spot it) there's no silly 3D gimmicks.

Many of the chases (and much of the finale) feel like they could have been in a new Indiana Jones movie - particularly when he climbs aboard a motorbike:



John Williams' score is, as you would expect, brilliantly cinematic and combines big orchestral sounds with hints of West Side Story-jazz rhythms and even some French (Belgian?) accordion music.  It does, though, lack the big memorable tune that is usually Williams' thumbprint - the 5-note Tin Tin leitmotif isn't, to my mind, catchy enough and feels rather like Danny Elfman's Batman theme.

This is, without doubt, the movie event of the year.

Could an animated movie win best picture at next year's Oscars?